Accelerated Learning - Better School Grades - An Artist's Approach

WESTERN BARBADOS SHORE

Learning and discovery go hand in hand. Most of us want to discover things and some of us have unearthed ways to do that. The first thing an artist does, and there are many brilliant artists, is assign priorities in the right order. The highest priority goes to you, the learner, the young artist, the one who wants to learn. You need to get to grips with yourself as a person before you can really begin the process of accelerating your learning.

As often as you dare, for we all have the challenges of others around us, get to a place that you find peace. Probably, this is in your bedroom, assuming that your brother or sister, or your mother will allow you some peace. Whilst alone, just think about yourself for a while. You are the most important person in your world and if you are unhappy or lack peace then you need to seek a way to find both. Being unhappy yourself means that you can do things for yourself to cheer you up. Think of funny things or strange things that you have noticed during the week. Try to see the funny side of them.

Almost every thing has a funny side, no matter how dark it seems. Try to see the irony of your situation. You may be unhappy, but there are many more your age that are unhappier, unless you are the most unlucky kid in the world. Even that is ironical. How could you out of the billions of kids in the world be the unhappiest kid. No, its just not possible, especially if you are reading this blog!

Accelerated learning and learning of most kinds requires observation that can be recalled. If you are truly aware of yourself, your brain will remember that situation and what you are trying to learn because it builds links to your awareness of yourself and what it is that you are learning. You learn least when you are unaware of yourself. Self remembering is at the seat of learning.

Related to the technique of self remembering is the technique of achieving a peaceful state of mind. If your mind is not peaceful, you will not learn as readily. To learn you can have soft music, but it needs to be peaceful or to be harmonious with your mood of learning. You can play load music and learn and be a peace within yourself. Its probably not a good idea if you are trying to learn for exams because your mind will recall better if you were playing the load music and you cannot do that in an examination hall. Its best to study for exams in the quiet of a room where you are not being distracted by TV, by family or pets. You need to create such a place in your home, if possible. If you can't do that, you need to go to a restaurant, library, coffee shop, book store, or some place quiet where they don't mind kids sitting quietly learning, sketching and reading.

1. Mind Mapping and Thinking

The origin of some of my ideas and my sketching of lectures comes from the work of Tony Buzan on mind mapping. Its very useful to learn how to do mind maps. There are lots of free software programs that help you in the process while you are on the computer. The range of mind mapping tools is absolutely enormous, so I won't try to tell you which ones to use, other than to say that you don't need softward to mind map effectively.

I learned how to take lecture notes by use of mind maps rather than normal lecture notes across the page. The mind map lecture notes you need to begin with a notebook that is blank. Instead of writing sentences while a lecture is being delivered, you draw the lecture as a series of mind maps. You begin by understanding what the lecturer is trying to say, and you use the mind mapping method to record the points the lecturer is making. This is a dynamic process and requires a bit of practice, but I found that my lecture notes for lectures given at British and American universities about social sciences, literature, history, physics, mathematics, and computers, were better because of mind mapping techniques.

2. The Law of Associations

Think of yourself as a budding artist. We, all, are artists in our own specific ways. Learning comes by association. If you want to learn something, you need to associate with that who is that is going to teach you, or what medium you can use to teach you. No association means no learning. There are many ways to associate yourself with an instructor, agent of instruction, or technology of instruction. If you want to learn how to drive for example, you associate with a car, with your parent or friend who is older and knows how to drive, with a book on how to drive, with the road, with the parking lot, with the highway, with the signs, and so on.

Associating with someone who already is highly skilled at what you want to learn is the best way to learn if there is any way that you can watch them in action or if they can teach you. You associate with your parents to learn how to be a parent. If your parent is not a good parent then your association with your parent won't teach you how to be a good parent other than by reverse copy catting. In this case you learn what is correct by observing what is incorrect. If you want to learn how to make someone happy, you do this by both copy catting and reverse copy catting. You watch what achieves happiness and you watch what makes for unhappiness. You learn by associating with the process that you wish to acquire skills in or knowledge about.

Associations can come directly by past experience or by sitting down and trying to think what would be a way to associate yourself with something that you wish to learn. As an artist, I do this by taking a blank piece of paper and writing the word me in the center then drawing a circle around it. The circle doesn't have to be perfect, but just enclose it. Suppose I have the goal of my learning to be to get a job that pays me a million dollars a year. To learn how to do that I have to associate with something that is connected to an annual income of a million dollars. As I am doing this I realize that there are sub conditions that I wish to place on myself. The first is that I want to associate only with an income stream of a million dollars that is earned honestly. If I am a young Canadian boy that might mean a hockey player, who plays for the professional league. So, there I am, aware of myself, and writing on my piece of paper the words 'hockey professional.' To accelerate my learning about how to make a million dollar income, I could associate with a hock player who earns an annual income of one million dollars.

There is a problem, or better put, a consequence arising from the law of association in learning that I, as an artist, put forth, and that is that associations also bring about learning of other things very rapidly. By associating with one thing, you associate with another, and you learn about the connections between one thing and another, and you see connections or associations that you would not otherwise see. That is why I think that associating with history and our history is so important to learning.

If you do not associate with the history of what it is you are learning about, you miss the connections that will accelerate your learning, you miss the 'don't do's of learning. For example, if you want to learn how to build a better society, you will accelerate your learning about how you can achieve that goal by actually associating with a better society, but you can also learn by associating yourself with a much worse society and seeing how not to build a better society, by associating with those things that do not build a better society. In this process of association, you need to associate with the events and things of the history that you are seeking to learn about, all at the same time not forgetting to associate with the negative things so that you learn about them as well.

Learning is a very personal thing, and one for which there are other aspects that you need in your achievement of accelerated learning: wanting and sketching; daydreaming and concentration; steps to memory improvement; enjoying your research home work.

3. Wanting and Sketching

When people would ask me what attracted me to painting and sketch, I would say that it is important to want something first. I would visit the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC almost every lunch break over several years. It was a great way to have a great meal and to se the work of the best of artists. In other words, I associated myself with good art of some of the best artists that have ever lived. In this way, by seeing their work and by copying it, I was able to progress rather rapidly in my skills as an artist. I got so that I felt there was no image that I could not create. Boy was this wrong!

What I have learned is that the world of art is in the galleries, but it is also widely distributed around the globe. There is fantastic stuff being done in private studios that lean towards or away from the electronic arts. To learn how to draw on the computer, I went to Montgomery College in Rockville and then to the University of Maryland. I attend both these university art environments with the female artist Lesley Skeith, who was a perfectionist and a brilliant copiest. Unfortunately, Lesley passed away suddenly from breast cancer in 2002 but before she died, we had worked together many years on many art and computer projects. Lesley had a great sense of humour and an eye for composition that was simple marvelous.

In 2001, I did an oil painting of Lesley Skeith staring at the bulletin board at Wake Forest University, where her son Mark Skeith attended. Mark attained a first rate degree and lived in Japan afterwords learning Japanese. At the time of the painting, Mark was working in the university library and was enjoying the world of pig kidnapping. His fraternity hit the headlines when the kidnapped a pig from a farmer. Mark was fun loving and got himself into many difficult situations before maturing into his new world of diplomacy and international relations.

4. Daydreaming and Concentration

What I was doing in the previous paragraph was day dreaming. Day dreaming is an important tool of the artist and is key to motivation and inspiration. In a day dream, we tend to be aware of things in an independent way that frees us from reality and allows the creative side of our brain a free reign. In our day dreams we travel to places that we would not normally go, and associate internally with impressions, sounds and images that have been captured in our past at times when we have been most aware of ourselves and our wants.

Day dreaming involves the mind concentrating on visual or aural direction and impressions that have been stored up by our brain for future use as in dreams, useful recall, or day dreaming. Scientists really don't know where the brain stores information, or whether the brain is an instrument of retrieval of information that is accessible through time because of channels that the brain 'lays' down between instances of time. There are reasons for thinking that the brain has associations with the quantum physical world. Such research is being undertaken by Roger Penrose at Cambridge University, who was a creative thinker about the role of higher mathematics in art and space. Tegmark a Swedish physicist disagrees with the notion of the brain being active at the quantum. The fact is that at present nothing has been verified in this complex field of study.

5. Steps to Memory Improvement

The usual method of remembering something is read, register it in the brain, and recall it from the brain. The recalling is very important and if you have a method of registering information as well as retrieving it you are well a way to getting straight 'A's in many schools. If you use mind mapping methods you will find it is much easier to remember an associated point than one that is unassociated. In schools in Britain, where marking on the curve is prevalent, you may be brilliant, but fail. It's the British way of dumbing down! Memory is not enough in some school systems to get you a pass. You also need to learn how to think and process information. Mind mapping techniques can assist with that as well.

6. Enjoying Your Home Work

When you read your notes that are mind mapped it is amazing to see how quickly you learn and recall information assuming that you have the correct associations. You will enjoy your home work much more when you use mind mapping techniques.

Is the Profit Motive for New Therapeutic Chemical Entities Correct?

WUH LAX WAS SURPRISED AT ME !

Who said that the profit motive works? If the profit motive worked, we would have saved billions of lives of people in developing countries who have died of disease. As it is, the children have died and we are responsible for not pushing our governments in Western economise to act more decisively and more effectively. I can think of no better solution to many economic problems that an over expansion of the therapeutic research at government expense ... forget the private sector. It has failed to deliver the goods to the third world. Why should we help the third world fight disease?

That to me is almost a stupid question, but my children tell me not to use the word stupid, so I will say that it is an insane question. Are we insane not to give everything we have got to eradicating the problems of the third world. I think the whole of Western Civilization is pretty damn insane not to. we talk about being Christians, and we talk about being Islamic and yet we have so many people dying from disease in third world countries that we should all be thoroughly ashamed. Disease is every one's problem.

The West is so caught up in its struggle against cancer that it has forgotten the many more dying of diseases that we can actually cure. And, incidentally in the process we may just get to grips with some of the disease issues in the West that are connected to those of third world countries.

But, the insane part of this whole matter is the patent system that we are using to calm our feelings of guilt. No, our governments should fund at public expense massive amounts of research that is presently going into weapons of mass destruction and bullets, not to mention bombs and tanks. To not help our third world countries fight disease is insane economics.

Why does Bill Gates have to show our people the right direction? He has done enough to create the microcomputer revolution. Three cheers for Bill and his lovely wife! Our governments can lower interest rates for the banks, but they can't fund research into disease solutions. That is insanity at its worst and we are all part of that insanity. Help the people of the world. Help the children who are dying by helping to eradicate the diseases around the world that ravage their populations. Our globe is getting smaller and smaller and we need to think of each other as being like close neighbours, giving our neighbours a helping hand.

Are Typhoid Fever and Cystic Fibrosis Related?

SIDMOUTH MOON

There is a mystery why so many people in Europe have the cystic fibrosis gene. Few people realize that they even have it or that they may already have children that have the gene, or that they may conceive children with cystic fibrosis. Do the math. If one in twenty have the gene then so many people who are married have the gene, and so many of the children that they have will have the gene. It's all down to probabilities, and chances are that you won't have a cystic fibrosis child because the math is working in that way, but only the math.

Scientists are puzzled as to why so many people in Europe have the cystic fibrosis gene. It means that almost every family has had or will have the gene at some time. Again, do the math. This means that cystic fibrosis is everyone's problem and everyone should help those with cystic fibrosis and everyone should pay to see that the disease is given top priority and eliminated as problem. Right!

Well, no, not quite, and the reason may be that expression of the cystic fibrosis gene was in the past what saved a significantly large segment of the population. In other words, the people with cystic fibrosis may have survived a disease that other succumbed to. In other words, having cystic fibrosis may have saved those in the population from something worse. What could be worse?

Well, one possibility is typhoid. Read about that in an article in Science News. This leads me to the conclusion that there are really two problems that society needs to deal with and solving one may help the other. In other words, it may be that if we find a solution to the disease of cystic fibrosis we need to have a solution to typhoid fever. Everyone can get typhoid fever. Right! But, no! Wrong! If you think that everyone can get typhoid fever maybe you have not understood what I am saying. In the end, we may need to sort out both diseases and thus combine the research efforts. Fund typhoid fever research while you fund cystic fibrosis research. Such combined research works in all our favours because we may all have the same problem of the expression, or non expression, of the cystic fibrosis gene. We may all need to have safe cystic fibrosis to escape typhoid fever! Or, perhaps you think typhoid is not really a problem. I would chew on that one if I were you and take a longer coffee break for your creative juices. I wonder what the other diseases might be that this research needs to unearth.

Really Useful Boxes - North American Distribution Opportunity!

THE DARTMOOR STONE MOVER by AW LAKE

You can't image how useful these boxes are. And, they seem to be without a North American distributor despite being offered on the Internet through various distributors. There seems to be an opportunity now for some budding capitalist entrepreneur to get a license to sell or manufacture the really useful boxes for distribution in North America. If you are an artist, you need to check them out. They are a really useful way to transport and store your paintings.

Maximizing Value or Efficiency But Not Both

WUH LAX AND THE COSMIC LANTERN

Economists can't have it both ways. On the one hand, they know that competition is imperfect, but, on the other hand, they talk about maximizing value and the need for competition. My point is that the two are incompatible most of the time because people generally do not know what is best for their environment.

Economics is bunk, not history! History is the story of economics and economic theory being bunk. People rarely take into account the needs on anything other than people. The importance of plants and animals in the world environment and economic equation is rarely included adequately because people generally are ignorant or just don't care about plants and animals, or other creatures of the earth.

Economists talk of general equilibrium, but they do not account for the disequilibrium of technology nor the environment. Governments can do away with valuable research programs to break away at the edges of our ignorance on energy creation because there is no real economics to argue for or against such programs, just awareness that they are probably, though not definitely right. Economists rarely take risk and uncertainty into account adequately. They don't know how to forecast technology, which would be the first requirement. They don't understand science which would be the second requirement, and they are hopeless at understanding knowledge creation, which would be the third requirement. Ask yourself whether the long term research programs the world needs are being supported by governments and you will probably get a negative answer.

At the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, governments have think tanks to discuss appropriate measures for new technology creation and dissemination. Do governments read and understand what is coming down the 'turnpike?' Do they really have any idea how we can reduce CO2 emissions in the next twenty years. Are governments and business prepared to act decisively to ensure a safe distance away from earth's environmental destruction. Is China on board? What do you think is the priority now? What technology issues do you think are important? Extend your coffee break and think more deeply about the real issues that you can detect in a world of confused priorities.

The Processes and Regions of Discovery - 2. The Group

THE MANOR HOUSE

Groups, like people, engage in processes of self discovery. One of the less attractive aspects to this is that groups can be leaderless. When an individual is leaderless, we say the individual is insane. When a group is leaderless, we need to say that the group is also insane. Insanity occrus when the individual or the group despite self awareness has no leadership to limit behaviour. It is like a ship on a vast sea without a captain. The ship may or may not try to find shore. Those on the ship squabble interminably about what direction the ship should take or what allegiance it should have to what nation or people.

At birth, human beings are normally fortunate enough to have automatic systems in place that predispose new borns to survival within groups. A baby will cry for food, will gurgle to indicate satisfaction, will stare to show awareness and acknowledgement of others present. Groups are something else! Groups emerge from other groups as a recognition of a difference. The members of a new group form a group because they observe a difference even if this is only a difference in direction.

A new group forms as one individual heads away from the rest even if only in thought. Others may or may not follow. When an individual strikes out in a new direction, there is generally the thought by that individual that there is something, or someone, or some group, over the horizon perhaps that meets certain specific needs more closely. Groups, once formed, or individuals departing from a group may try to get others to join. The group recognizes that an environment may require a group of a sufficient size for it to survive. What we see in modern society is the gradual breakdown of the authority of larger groups as individuals recognize that they survive in smaller and smaller groups.

What defines this process is the force that enables the survival of the independent group. Remove that survival mechanism and you force small groups to retreat into large groups and the process of group formation rather than group disintegration ensues. Ever wonder why civilizations rise and fall. It may be that the dynamics of the forces that hold a group together change and the large group can no longer survive and becomes increasingly fragmented. This dynamic occurs within groups, so there are subgroups within groups and subgroups form and move. All this is because of the processes of group discovery and group awareness. What leaders do is enable the group to discover aspects about itself that distinguish it from other groups in meaningful ways.

Technology is a very important force in the creation and destruction of groups. We have seen how the birth pill has affected the family group. We will see how the test tube baby will affect the pairing of individuals of the same or different sexes into groups.

Why it is important to make mistakes and get lost

THE SOMERSET MIST

I often get lost wandering through the many hedged lanes of Devon and Somerset. These tiny lanes are only wide enough for a small car to travel one way. The walking is not easy because the lanes go up and down hills, often very steep hills, and you can find yourself huffing and puffing. My longest walks occur when I get thoroughly lost. The sign posting is not very helpful sometimes because it directs you around in circles until you finally realize your destination is somewhere in the middle of a circle. By that time you are so tuckered out that you collapse by the side of the lane, put your feet up and fall asleep. Then, you dream while you listen to nature humming around you.

A crow caws away in the distance. She has seen you and her challenge is to watch you while you are in her area. If you were to get up and walk one direction she would caw one sound, but if you went the other she would caw another sound. She knows how to tell everyone that matters to her, who you are and where you are going. There are eyes watching you that you could never imagine. Unseen eyes monitor you from many places. And, so it is with the world. You may think that you are alone, but you are never alone. There is always someone or something following you and watching you.

If you have been watching the ABC TV series Lost, you will appreciate part of what I mean.

There are many ways to be lost. One of the aspects about being lost, however, is that you have an opportunity of self discovery. At some point, usually from fear, your senses are heightened and you have to think if you are to find out where you are. Generally, you have enough where-with-all to discover how to find your self. You look for the smallest of clues to determine a direction from which you have travelled. If all else fails, you retreat as far back along the route that you think you have made and try to guess which turnings you took.

Another way you can get lost is when you have prepared something, as on the computer, and the electricity goes out suddenly. Everything that you have been working on is lost. You may have spent hours on the work that you were doing. The great thing about having been lost, and we all lose ourselves at some time, is that having has the pain of being lost we learn to avoid being lost the next time. Or, at least, we learn to avoid the worst consequences of being lost. It is important to ask for directions if you are lost. It is important to set marks on your route if you are travelling in unfamiliar territory. Even mental marks helps as in remembering yourself for a half second and recording your surroundings and yourself within those surroundings.

The Joy of Sketching

NOT DUMBLEDORE!

Sketching is partly serious, but mainly the mind at play. It is not simple, but it is rewarding if you persist. It is also extremely useful in any activity requiring thought. I frequently sketch just to be creative. Much of the images are exploratory, and it is often easy to get discouraged when they don't immediately take a shape that one likes. That is why it is useful to do verbal sketches as well as visual. A verbal sketch requires the same tools of a pencil and paper.

Sketching, when it is serious, may be a valuable tool in creating thinking. The teacher Edward de Bono has many ideas about how one can use sketches to get your ideas into a form where they can be used. He developed the idea of thought hats where you assumed a role and took it to its logical or creative conclusion. Put on a type of hat and think in the way that the hat you put on would suggest that you thought. This idea can be expanded in many ways, and I am sure actors often have to assume thought hats when trying to get their characterization correct or interesting.

When I was a student at university, I would rarely take notes in the normal way. Much of my time was spend sketching logic maps of the lecture material as it was being delivered. I would use blank unlined note paper and my notes would look pretty disorganized to most people, but underlying them was the logic of the lecture. I rarely got less than an 'a' using this method and saved myself a lot of time trying to remember my notes. They just seemed to be more memorable.

Economists Search For Equilibrium

BICKLEIGH CASTLE

A constant theme in economic thought has been that of equilibrium. But, the search for equilibrium was always elusive. Even Karl Marx in his Das Kapital was under the illusion that an economic system would at some time reach an equilibrium. Others knew better, and it was Joseph Schumpeter, a Harvard professor and economic historian, who was studying business cycles, concluded that the capitalist economic system, and for that matter any economic system did not linger in an equilibrium. He even felt that there was no dynamic equilibrium, and pointed to new commodities as the reason. Economies are constantly subject to innovation he wrote.

The most famous macro economist of all time John Maynard Keynes also concluded that economies rarely reached an equilibrium. This did not stop classical and neoclassical economists from assuming equilibrium in their models. What resulted was the great schism between those that assumed economies would attain equilibrium and those who in face of severe criticism maintained that economics were constantly adjusting and generally were to be found in a state of moving disequilibrium, albeit dynamic.

What amazes one after reading all this history of thought is that the economists who proposed equilibrium did not seem very sophisticated at political science, and after all the field had been named political economy. The reason is obvious. For if you shared one view of politics and wanted to maintain the status quo, whether you were communist, liberal, or conservative, you would want to view the economic world as being in equilibrium.

That you were totally wrong did not matter. You wished to believe in the myth of economic equilibrium. So entrenched were the ideas of the equilibrium people that they would stop students from getting post graduate degrees if they viewed the economic world as in disequilibrium. The left wingers and the right wingers would select leaders and they would agree amongst themselves to maintain an equilibrium of graduates who exposed there respective views of the economy and indirectly political philosophy.

Thus in return for two PhD graduates of equilibrium there would be in return two PhD graduates of disequilibrium. So the result was a state of equilibrium, you might think. But no! The problem was that no matter how much you avoided reality by allowing only mathematical models of equilibrium to pass a PhD, you would end up in disequilibrium because more students wanted to show that economies were in disequilibrium. So to solve the problem, PhD graduates proposing dissertations that exceeded the number of those producing theses of equilibrium were stopped from getting PhDs by being failed, or discouraged, or told to do more work so that they waited five years or more in a queue before attaining their PhDs. Such was the state of disequilibrium at the best British universities in the world when I was a post graduate student.

What is it like now?

The Impact on my Reading and Writing of JK Rowling's Harry Potter Series

As a book writer, I can quite proudly say that my desire to writing and subsequent writing was tremendously influenced by JK Rowling's success with the Harry Potter series of books. I came across Harry quite by accident. Many times, I would visit Borders Books or Barnes and Noble at lunch time in Washington, DC. Books are my passion, and I like all kinds of books, fiction or non-fiction. I am aware that I was aware that he was being promoted. However, my interest was in series of books because I loved to read on the metro, and when I did read I would read a whole series. This was over a period of a decade, at least. There may have been three or more Harry Potter books out there before I really became aware of them.

For several months, Harry would be staring at me from the store book shelves, but I must have missed him many times before I made the plunge and bought the first Harry Potter book in my life. It has had a profound influence on my perspectives in every sense of the word. I bought the book because there was a Harry Potter series of books. This made sense to me since the Harry Potter books require an investment in learning characters. I am not very good in remembering all the different characters in books before losing interest, so I have to think there is a payoff from all the effort.

One of the comments on my own book series of Wuh Lax has been that there are so many characters. To be honest, I don't really care, and to be frank its because I can remember them and I think young people reading my books will remember them. It may be now because they play computer games and in such games one has a host of different characters. It may be easier for kids to remember a larger number of characters. If one invests the time to learn the characters in the Wuh Lax series you will be rewarded. I don't really expect you to buy the first in the series until I have about three or four of the series in print and on the books shelves.

If you have read the first Wuh Lax book, you will know that some of my characters are based on real people who have influenced my life and have passed on to the other side. In my book, they come back as actors within an ethereal realm interacting with our matereal world. The ghosts of the past people are what drives events in our present day life experiences. That I am sure of, so it is not very difficult for me to imagine my mother or my cousin, or former friends and relatives visiting me and my characters in the here and now or in the past. Another thing that you will know is that my book is very philosophical at its roots and has a lot of science in it. The first book is only an introduction to these aspects. My writing will be educational as well as entertaining and will contain all sorts of discoveries.

What the Harry Potter series did for me was show me how to develop a world using words and then populate that world with information and mystery that will ultimately provide entertainment while it educates. The reaction of many people to the Harry Potter series was that it was evil in some ways because it took kids minds away from Jesus Christ or religion. Many churches wanted to ban the book. Of course, this is absolutely against what I felt about the book, the series, and the author. I could relate to Harry as a closet boy, bullied and deprived. Immediately, I wanted him to rise up and be somebody important. What Rowling did was give him a destiny and for that I was eternally grateful because harry Potter really came alive as a being within my mind. He is as real as Captain Aubrey in the Patrick O'brien series, or Hornblower in the Forrester series.

My favorite author, as you may know is Captain Frederick Marryat. He is one of the few writers to satisfy my yearning to read within a single book. Marryat's book, 'Children of the New Forest' was transforming. Another writer, who is stupendous in building a story is Sir Walter Scott, the author of Ivanhoe.

The Processes and Regions of Discovery - 1. The Self

BEAUTIFUL DARTMOOR

The processes of discovery require a sense of personal awareness that we might not realize. We discover things in many ways at many times. Often, we don't realize that we have made a discovery. Then, suddenly our brain kicks in and says, "Wake Up! You have discovered something new. Be aware! Be conscious of what it is that you are perceiving!"

I often meet people who say that they never read fiction, that they are grounded in the real world and don't need the rubbish of imagination to cope with the real world. This is, in my opinion, the gravest of mistakes. It is like saying I do not believe that humour is good for me. Humour is the operation of the imaginary component, when we see logical constructs come in conflict with each other, and we make a discovery about the truth of our reality. It is that we are not real, and we are not part of a real world. We need to understand this fact before we can make any progress in the world of invention and innovation.

I have determined four broad areas or types of personal discovery, which can actually include scientific discovery and invention. I would recommend that you develop your skills in each of these groups moving to the next level as you progress. Unlike the discovery process in some teachings, I see the discovery of the world as the last stage and do not put primacy on self discovery as the end of the process. But, I do see self discovery as essential before world discovery.

1. The Self
2. The Group
3. The Roots of Being
4. The World

The greatest discovery region is that of world discovery. That is why you exist, not self discovery. Self discovery is only a pre-condition for finding and then be enabled to make true discoveries about the world, to invent new technologies and understandings. Ever wonder why those who are too religious or self centered don't invent useful things for the world, don't make things that enable real progress in the world! They are too wrapped up in themselves.

Most people get the sequence of discovery wrong and end the processes of discovery within themselves. This is not correct. Discover yourself first then the world. You will find that as you enter the last process and make discoveries about your world, you will be strengthening the processes of self discovery automatically without effort, but initially you need to engage in self discovery:

These types of discovery are related to how we process information that forms the basis of our discoveries. They do not tell us what we discover, but direct us towards the processing that goes on and the motivation behind discovery. What we don't often realize is that we discover things about ourselves and our world because our psychology enables us to or we don't discover things because our psychology disables us from discovery.

Discovery associated with yourself or the self

What you need to discover in the self-discovery process is what your brain is willing to let you discover. You brain is a very fast component of your being so you may not be aware that it is even an enabler or dis-abler of your desire and directions of discovery. You may not even be aware that you need to tune into what your brain is actually doing. If you don't you are captive to your brain and all the limitations that it places on you to keep you from discovering yourself.

Some people go to the point of disabling the brain through drugs. But while these methods may work for a time they are addictive in that they are very unreliable after repeat attempts and more of the drug is required. No! Don't use drugs to discover yourself. They are very bad. Use your own will to discover yourself.

Better still there are some writers that help in the self discovery enabling process. Authors such as Norman Vincent Peale very quickly draw you into methods that target your inner self discovery mechanisms. Alternative, you will find that some fiction writers are very strong stimulants of inner self discovery mechanisms. Tolkien, in particular, is extremely helpful. I am not referring to the films that were based on his books, which fall into the group discovery process, but on your reading the books of Tolkien alone and seeking to comprehend what he is saying to you about how you can discover who you are.

Read the Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings. When you have finished these books you will have discovered yourself, I assure you. But, you must read the books. It is not the visual presentation of Tolkien's ideas from outside that will help you discover yourself, but your own mental images of the what he writes, which will trigger mechanisms within your mind that will enable your to begin to discover yourself, perhaps deeply, for the first time.

Another writer that I can recommend for self discovery is Mark Twain. His books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are particularly good at helping one to discover oneself. The thing is though that you must read the books for yourself quietly and privately.

When you read, find a comfortable place that is very quiet. Turn off the radio, music, turn the light down to soft, have something to drink beside you and a few treats to munch as you read. Prepare yourself for a long trip into the worlds these authors create. As you enter these worlds you will discover many things about yourself.

Think about what Tolkien or Twain are saying. Try to get inside the characters and build mental images of the worlds in which the characters live. As you do, you will develop skills needed to discover yourself, awareness's that you will find valuable in your self discovery process.

Think Positively in All That you Do - A Gitomer World

DID YOU EAT MY MOTHER ?

One of the most positive individuals to hit the book stands in recent years, deposing Norman Vincent Peale, is an author going by the name of Jeffery Gitomer. What makes Gitomer so absolutely appealing is that he thinks that one should work and that working hard is good for you. It may even help you create a positive attitude in all that you do. Gitomer says that watching the news is not a great way to develop a positive attitude. Turn the TV off and study how you can really help other people.

Canon Sets the Pace for HD Video Cameras

PROTECT SEA TURTLES

In my opinion, Canon seems miles ahead of the competition when it comes to digital reflex and high definition video cameras. Its all the patents they hold and the quality of design of their products. If you have a problem with your Canon camera share it with me, AW Lake. Otherwise I will continue to think that they are the greatest for creating JPG stills and MPEG-2 video files that you can share on the Internet.

Combined with Flash or Shockwave capability using editing 'swf' file creation software such available using Swish Max you have a pretty formidable combination. I now use Canon for all my video needs and have had great success with them. Make sure that when you plug in any video device that you have surge protection. You never know when the lightning might strike, even in winter, but especially in early spring.

If you are thinking of creating video DVDs then buy yourself a copy of the Essential DVD Maker which has loads of tips on how to create DVDs easily and economically. The publication has easy to use images that shorten your learning curve amazingly.

I use my HD Canon video camera to take stills, and it does a wonderful job. Buy the correct card and you have enormous capacity. You may need to buy the HD video film in Japanese camera stores and get the 80+ minute film. The American camera shops may not have HD yet! If you buy a video camera, you will find that the tapes give you probably the best results, and I was told that the hard disk storage cameras are not very good for fast HD work. Ask an expert why, but I think it has to do with storage capacity and throughput.

Even a digital SLR reflex camera can take movies and they are reasonably good. The video cameras will probably have better zoom capabilities and tape is really where its at right now.

What Some People are Saying About the Credit Crisis

History repeats itself. The story of economics is that new generations don't seem to have the capacity to learn from previous generations. Everyone seems to get wrapped up in a frenzy of greed and fear.

Few people around the world will remain unaffected by what is happening in America. It is unfortunate because of the numbers of older vulnerable people on fixed incomes that will be impacted severely. They worked to reap their rewards of retirement only to find the government had not drawn up the rules of play for the banking systems carefully enough and much of their futures were under threat from inaction and complacency.

When I, myself, noticed that much was seriously amiss with the US policies for lending and that it would produce an almighty housing crisis back in 2002, I said to myself, "Here we go again. Its as if the only country that knows how to contain these things is Australia, and that's because it was so very severe there so long ago. Don't people remember the property loan crisis in Texas at the start of the Regan presidency? Look what that did!" It forced me to do things in anticipation of disaster that others thought were pretty crazy. "Well," I said, "If you buy a property in the wrong place right now you will be strangling yourself with a steep mortgage for the rest of your life. I don't intend to do that." Of course, no one listened, not even my own family. "The government would never let such a situation arise," was the reaction I was getting. Yes, faith in a government that had the blinkers on. Just read the reports of the time and judge for yourself.

An explanation of the current sub-prime mortgage crisis can be found on wikipedia. The thing to realize is that the situation is getting worse as the full scale of problems emerges and the global financial system gets to grips with the severity of what has happened to lending in the United States.

Internationally, the crisis was easily evident in the summer of 2007. The full facts of the severity were not visible to policy makers because of the way the loans were packaged and netered banking accounting systems after being bought and sold like commodities. Reporters realized that the crisis was spreading rapidly into much of the economy as Vikas Baja and Louise Story reported in the New York Times in February. Those of us that watched people in Cleveland losing their homes were already very worried.

Fiona Lake reported on the way the crisis was being handled around the world.

SOME INTERESTING LINKS:

1. Primary Mortgages


• Tom Bawden on potential home loan defaults TimesOnLine
• Urjit Patel on aspects of international situation arising from the crisis Brookings



2. Home equity loans

• Robin SidelWall Street Journal
• Ruth Simon Wall Street Journal


3. Consumer loans


• Ben Bernanke urged banks to act quickly to avoid recessionary forces getting out of hand.


4. Spending and credit cards


• Scott Lanman - Bloomberg
• World Situation - Phil Izzo - Wall Street Journal


5. Stock Market


• Peter McKay Wall Street Journal
• Phil Izzo compiles economists reaction Wall Street Journal
  

A Review of Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you are a stock market investor, this is the book you should be reading if you have not done so already. It would have been easier for you had you absorbed what Taleb has to say many years ago, but now you have had a taste of the negative, you can turn your efforts into the positive. I remember attending the lectures of John Kenneth Galbraith who spoke often of stock market crashes. His ideas were based on a thorough reading and analysis of the 1929 crash. Investing in the stock market is gambling, but it may be the only way that the 'small' investor has to get a portion of the capitalist economic pie. The rewards of investing in stocks and shares can be considerable, but the small investor has always to be aware of the sharks and black holes.

What Taleb does very well is show how self deception can dominate stock market and for that matter credit market advice giving to the point where it absorbs most of the capital of investors who lose almost everything. I might add, in one foul swoop. That's the danger, the risk, the eventual out turn from speculation that is completely outside one's control. We see the Donald Trumps of this world and expect that he has some secrets that he can share. The only problem is that a host of Trump wannabees have lost heavily in the property market. What's Trump's secret you wonder?

Well, you need to read Taleb's book and you will begin to understand how those investing also hedge. Hedging is when you take the risk out of investing realizing that you are not an expert investor or adviser, but part of a largely random process that can be terribly destructive of valuation of capital and almost everything else.

In the UK, the individual in the civil service who mailed a package containing a disk with people's private information thought that he knew the mail system, that it was secure. The upshot was that the individual took a risk and almost everyone in the country, almost 25 million people, lost big time. It would have been better for the government to install a fail safe system of auditing so as not to risk people's private information. This is what hedging is all about. Its about making sure that you are not exposed to risk. You carry on your business. You make money. But, you do not take unnecessary risk.

In foreign exchange operations, CLS Bank, does this very task of eliminating certain kinds of risk. FX dealers hedge their currency positions all the time so that their banks are not exposed to unnecessary risk. When I worked in Barclays Bank we were put on courses that showed us how to build a currency book and maturity ladder that got you where you wanted to be, largely without risk taking. That's the way money remains with you.

This is what the IMF SDR valuation is all about. Smart countries follow the SDR valuations of their currencies so as to avoid risk, avoid Asian financial implosion! What do you think China is doing? If it followed the advice of the US authorities it might be taking unnecessary risk so it has to monitor the value of its currency against all the major currencies. This way it avoids the rsik of an implosion and disasterous surprise and gradually moves in the direction it needs to move. Look at the Chinese exchange rate. Is is moving in the right direction? This is a question that you need to ask in a period of wild speculation in oil as a commodity.

Knowledge Creation Using the Internet

The Internet is not just a means for disseminating information, it is also a vehicle of knowledge creation. In our highly scientific world, we need verification of results of studies and experiments before we consider them to be valid. The Internet is a means by which the results of studies can be directly validated. A person in one lab can actually watch another person conduct an experiment. There is no longer a need to wait to see an experiment performed. Everyone can watch it being performed. This is knowledge creation. Its not technology creation necessarily, but it is knowledge creation, and it is occurring very rapidly and it can occur even more rapidly.

When I did my first studies of technology transfer in the early 1970's, the process of knowledge creation was laborious to say the least. Today, what I did then can be performed over the Internet. It is now possible for a researcher to interview heads of research over the Internet. Wow! Now that is a change.

The Cosmic Lantern

The cosmic lantern is a very strange device that has existed through several millenia. It was recently discovered by the author Arthur Lake in London, England in an antique shop. The lantern has inspired a series of books based on Lake's experiences and those of a host of people that have interacted with the people who have possessed lantern through the ages, and around the globe. Lake has researched the story of the Lantern and its association with Tintagel, Wookey, Glastonbury, King Arthur, Lancelot of the Lake and the Knights of the Round Table.

The story of lantern reveals many of the mysteries surrounding the current search an understanding of the mysteries of the Holy Grail, the learned societies of ancient Druids, and several secret Guilds of London formed in the middle ages that influenced the renaissance in Europe. This series is a must read.

An unusual property of the lantern is that it does not obey normal physical laws and endows its possessor with amazing powers. In ancient times, shortly ofter the Romans had invaded South West Britain, the lantern appeared mysteriously in the possession of a peasant boy, son of a fisherman, who lived in a tree house that sat in the dark regions of Wookey Marsh hidden away from the Roman soldiers. But, only for a time because a famous General of the Roman Army named Vespasian came to learn of the lantern through his Commander of the Roman Cavalry, a man called Corellus.

The story of Wuh Lax and the Cosmic Lantern is now selling exclusively by Togwells at Amazon or from the author directly at Togwells Publishing. This is an independent publishing effort. Support your independent writers.

The Psychology of Handwriting

Your handwriting can reveal many things about you that you are probably unaware. The science of handwriting analysis has progressed significantly. Practitioners of analytical techniques offer their services at a price, so the science has grown up from a past time to a full fledged approach to seeing within human personality. The fact is that everything that we do can be analysed forensically. The results may not be accurate or they may hit spot on in ways that get to the deeper sources of illness and physical conditions as well as personality traits. One has to be careful with claims that handwriting analysis is all powerful. It is still a very young science.

I remember my father, a minister of religion, who visited the sick in a local insane assylum telling me in the 1960's that handwriting analysis was being used to understand mental illness. He said that they were experimenting with a therapy to reach the deeper parts of the brain by training 'mentally ill' people how to improve their handwriting. Apparently, just the training in handwriting arts could result in more organized thought and behaviour at very deep psychological levels.

A french Canadian student of psychology who I worked with in a summer job at Weston's Bakery in Longueuil, Quebec who would tease me that every motion I made could be analysed by a trained psychologist and that I was forever giving off clues about my weaknesses that a trained person could understand and use to recommend therapy, i.e. that I was strange and need help.

Your handwriting does let others know whether you are under stress or likely to be ill.

You too can Draw and Paint Pictures

As a post graduate university level teacher, I am only too aware that everyone should learn how to draw and actually do drawings and sketches on a regular basis. There are many places to learn and you cannot begin too soon. Drawing, like singing or public speaking, may actually save your life or enable you to live longer, so don't ignore it. This is because drawing requires certain parts of your brain to think. Not only do you have to visualize, but you have to link that visualization to motion in your hand, nose or foot, if you draw with your toes.

Strings In Cosmic Space - Are They For Real?

Scientists are pondering the irregularities of what they see as space and time. The notion of a big bang still has many followers, but there are new ideas. One of these ideas has to do with cosmic strings that are enormous entities created in the earliest period of the formation of the universe. The concept of cosmic strings derives in part from the theory that matter is ultimately made up of extremely tiny strings, string theory. Much of cosmic science is based on educated guesses and hypotheses that have yet to be proven.

Scientists work from what they can see through powerful telescopes and observe in their laboratories. If they observe patterns, they try to imagine what these patterns might mean scaled up to the full size of the universe, or scaled down to the tiniest level conceivable of the theoretically small elements of the universe's matter or energy. They also try to imagine what it could have been like had the cosmos emerged from the very tiny to the very large in an event such as the big bang. Astrophysicists, such as Jacqueline Hewitt, tend to start from what they refer to as the standard cosmological model. They work from that to examine the possibility that the standard cosmological model is incorrect and that they understood almost everything wrong.

The point is that they really do not know as yet when the universe actually began. They have a theory, but that is all it is, a very good theory. Such centers need our support for surprisingly enough the churches of religion aren't interested for the most part in doing this form of study.

Religious study centers instead tend to look at the cosmos very differently. They are primarily interested in conserving evidence of the past as it relates to discoveries made by individuals using very different technologies from what scientists use.

Both approaches to understanding the cosmos are very logical approaches. One asserts that it is possible to understand the cosmic universe by means of messages that are around us and that we can tap into using our brains, or that the active elements of the universe are trying to communicate to us with messages in dreams and visions, and other worldly signs and events that we need to interpret.

Both science and religion require faith either to base your logic on what evidence can be proven by means of visible testing and reproduction of tests independently, or on what you understand about the spiritual or communications process between the cosmos elements, such as God, and the faith practitioners, the religious prophets, saints, and savants, the spiritual leaders that tell us what has been their experience and experiences of predecessors.

Both approaches are valid despite both groups claiming what other groups do is bunk, like the notion history is bunk. We can ignore such inter group skirmishes because we know better. There is a role for science and religion in our cosmos and we would be poorer without the squabble between them. However, both approaches need to recognise that they are just that, approaches. In the modern world we tend to like science more because it gives us nice toys to play with, but in reality they are just nice toys and our real enjoyment comes from our relationships with other nice people and with the living 'natural' creatures of our universe, such as dogs and cats.

What we really want to avoid is outright war between the two approaches. This occurs when one or other of the approaches assumes too much about its role in defining what approach people should take. It becomes a problem if religious leaders do not keep to their turf which is only a partial element of the truth as we know it. Neither of the groups has the whole truth, and that is a very real fact. They both look silly in the face of ordinary observation when they claim supremacy and want to assume the political reigns of authority forcing people to conform to one approach or the other.

The great 'British' historical theorist and economic thinker, Karl Marx, said religion was only to be seens an opium of the people and something to be ignored or feared when it came to the dynamics of economic forces and the social struggles of people that were exploited in the name of profit. We know that approach of eliminating religion from the equation was patently false and we know that those people who fostered that approach to have commited many crimes. And, so to have religious leaders claiming to have the truth and nothing but the truth. Both athiests and religious leaders have a tendency to misguide, so treat them with respect, but do a wide circle around those that don't show you are valid way to establish the veracity of what they are claiming. Don't be misled. Drink your coffee and think about it, seriously!